Panthera pardus spelaea

Panthera pardus spelaea Temporal range: Late Pleistocene PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Skeleton at the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze
Rock art depiction of a leopard from Chauvet Cave
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Suborder:	Feliformia
Family:	Felidae
Subfamily:	Pantherinae
Genus:	Panthera
Species:	P. pardus
Subspecies:	†P. p. spelaea
Trinomial name
†Panthera pardus spelaea (Bächler, 1936)
Synonyms
Felis pardus spelaea Bächler, 1936 Felis antiquus Cuvier, 1835 Panthera pardus antiqua (Cuvier, 1835) Panthera pardus begoueni Fraipoint, 1923 Panthera pardus sickenbergi Schutt, 1969 Panthera pardus vraonensis Nagel, 1999

Panthera pardus spelaea, also known as the European Ice Age leopard, is a fossil leopard subspecies which roamed Europe in the Late Pleistocene and possibly the Holocene.^[1]

Taxonomy

The subspecies was first described as Felis pardus spelaea by Emil Bächler in 1936.^[2]

Several fossil bones from the

• P. p. antiqua[3]
• P. p. begoueni^[4]
• P. p. sickenbergi^[5]
• P. p. vraonensis^[6]

These are now considered junior synonyms of P. p. spelaea.^{[citation needed]}

Mitochondrial genomes from Late Pleistocene European leopard specimens found in Germany suggests that they represent a distinct group of extinct leopards that diveged from the common ancestor of Asian leopards (including those from the Caucasus) around 500,000 years ago.^[7]

Description

The European Ice Age leopard's skull was medium-long, and its characteristics are closest to the Panthera pardus tulliana subspecies. An apparent depiction of this leopard in the Chauvet Cave shows a coat pattern similar to that of modern leopards but with a unspotted belly, presumably white. Like other mammals, leopards from the cold glacial periods of the Late Pleistocene are usually larger than those from the warm interglacial phases. As in modern leopards, there was a strong sexual dimorphism, with males being larger than females.^[1]

Distribution

The timing of arrival of leopards in Europe is disputed. Some authors have posited that they arrived in Europe during the late Early Pleistocene around 1.2-1.1 million years ago.

The site of Equi in northwestern Italy represents the richest concentration of leopard remains from Pleistocene Europe, with some 200 leopards having been excavated.[10] The youngest reliable records for leopards outside of eastern Europe are from the Iberian Peninsula, around 17-11,000 years ago, with records in the Iberian Peninsula possibly extending into the early Holocene, during the Mesolithic.^[8] Modern (Asian-type) leopards are still found on the fringes of Europe in the North Caucasus.^[14]

Palaeobiology

Fossils of European Ice Age leopards in Europe are sometimes found in caves, where they apparently sought shelter or hid their prey. They generally preferred smaller caves, most likely because larger caves were usually occupied by larger predators such as cave bears, cave lions (P. spelaea), or humans. In European Ice Age caves, leopard bones are far rarer than those of lions, and all currently known fossils belong to adults, suggesting that they rarely, if ever, raised their cubs in caves. Where leopard remains are found in larger caves, they are often found in the cave's deeper recesses, as in Baumann's and Zoolithen Cave in Germany. It is not precisely known which prey species these leopards hunted, although they may have been similar to modern snow leopards, which prey on ibex, deer and wild boar. It is likely that leopards scavenged or occasionally killed cave bears during hibernation in their dens. During the cold phases, European Ice Age leopards occurred mainly in mountain or alpine boreal forests or in mountains above the treeline, and were not usually found in the lowland mammoth steppes.^[1]

See also

References